Bring charges against the agents of management for stoking the violence!

Comrades,

The events of July 18th at the Manesar plant of Maruti-Suzuki are representative events that reveal the condition of workers in today’s age. These events have brought forward [revealed] the suffocating atmosphere of the nation’s factories and the smoldering anger of its workers, but it has also stripped the mask from the real face of the government, the Indian Administrative System [IAS] and the police machinery [apparatus]. These events have also exposed the vast [vicious] anti-worker character of the capitalist media and at the same time rather than being unbiased and independent as they greatly claim they are really the mouthpieces [megaphones] of the ruling classes.

And just as the electronic media has conducted one-sided reporting, they too have gotten down to the business of characterizing the workers as a mob bent on violence, anarchy, and murder. Ignoring all established procedures [rules] of law, the police made all 3000 workers suspects and has begun rounding them up. At the same time, not a single member of management has been interrogated. There is a growing sympathy for the members of management who were injured in the scuffle, but there is no concern for the injured workers. The workers have repeatedly insisted that management brought in thugs, but neither the police, the administration [IAS?], nor the media have not found it relevant to look into that. Just as in the incidents at Graziano in NOIDA or Allied Nippon in Sahibabad, here, too, there has been a one-sidedness before any investigation, meaning the workers have been charged as criminals.

Certainly, the events that took place at the Manesar plant on July 18 were neither coordinated nor could they have been part of any strategy of struggle [resistance]. It was an explosion of long-brewing anger among the workers whose fuse was lit by the mischief [plotting] of management. From the media to the government, no one bothered to learn why the workers’ anger unleashed itself in this manner. Last year, during the campaign [movement] of three long waves of actions from June to October, there was not a single incident of violence on the part of the workers. The workers were inside the factory for thirteen days in June, and then outside the factory for 33 days in September when they held an encampment, and once again in October when several parts of the plant were under workers’ control. Despite being goaded by management, there was not a single incident of property destruction or violence. The same workers that conducted a long campaign with uninterrupted nonviolence—why did these very workers become violent [fierce]?

Looking at the condition of Maruti-Manesar over the course of the last several months makes everything clear. Last October, when the management used the filth of bribes, government intimidation and false promises to force a compromise and destroyed the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union by buying off its leadership with bribes, it proved that it did not have good intentions. In order to stop the never-ending stream of losses, they wanted to put an end to the strike by any means, but they had no intention of fulfilling the workers’ demands. The course of events over the last eight months has demonstrated that this is true.